ECONOMIC INEQAULITY WIDENS IN THE UNITED STATES CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY Abstract Why are some people extremely rich? Are they a better human being than anyone else? Or were they born with some super powers? This question arises to many people when they see that people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have more wealth than 50% of American population. In today’s America, rich people are extremely rich and poor people remain poor. Why is the inequality gap between the rich and the poor widening day by day. In my research I came across

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Econ omic Inequality-4 the reasons and the economic conditions that have left many hard working American middle class workers at the same financial economic conditions what they were generations ago. The economic policies of America have been shifted to the hands of the rich and powerful thus ignoring the needs of a basic American. Economic strategies like outsourcing and technology have made incentives for the rich people and corporations to make huge profits and on the contrary, such strategies have replaced middle income jobs thus leaving those workers unemployed and encouraging more inequality. Furthermore, the high cost of education has restricted many poor families in America to gain the knowledge and the skills so they could enter the skill biased jobs. Economic Inequality widens in the United States United States is considered as one of the richest country in the world, however inequality exists amongst its four social classes. . Of these four classes, inequality exists mostly between the upper class and the lower class. The inequalities of both classes are clearly depicted through their incomes. From the year 1979 through the present, the growth in income has disproportionately escalated. In the last fifteen years, the income of the upper classes has continuously been increasing while the income of the lower classes has generally declined, showing that the inequality gap between the rich and the poor has widened immensely. Moreover, numerous

causes such as outsourcing, introduction of technology and high cost of education have invaded the middle class jobs, which have also served to enhance the wages of skilled workers while depressing the employment opportunities and earnings of the lower wage workers. From the past three decades, the trend towards inequality is rising at a rapid rate in the United States. To begin with, “In 1976, the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 19% of all the private material wealth. In the US today, they own over 40% of all wealth. Their share now exceeds the wealth owned by the bottom 92% of the US population combined” (Wolff, 2007). In other words, the top 5% of the wealthy, own over half of the wealth pie, the bottom three-fifths hold a paltry of 4.2% of the total net worth. As the economy grew the majority of

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